"No," I say. "She came here for honesty. We are going to give her honesty."
Chiara has not moved. She is looking at me with the expression I remember from every argument we had that mattered, not angry, something older and more considered than anger. She is processing. She is reaching her conclusions before she responds, which was always her way and which I have always, even at the end, respected.
"You are right," she says. "About my part in it."
Is that all she has to say? No apology, just that I'm right.
Santos stands up from the armchair. He crosses to the window and stands with his back to the room for a moment, looking at the rain, and then he turns around and drops the performance entirely. No warmth deployed. No charm calibrated. Just him, standing in the gray light of the study with the rain at his back.
"Cazzo," he says, quietly. To the room, to himself, to the specific weight of what he is feeling. "Chiara. You have no excuse for your behavior. You were out of line." He looks at her. "I wasangry when you left. The truth is I was angry because I cared and caring had made me stupid, and I wondered if we had driven you to that. This is part of the reason I never wanted another omega. I thought we did that to omegas." He shakes his head. "That is not something I am proud of."
Tomas nods once.
Chiara stands.
She walks to the window, past Santos, and stands looking out at the rain-dark garden for a moment. Just standing. The rain runs down the glass. The island is gray and close and honest about it.
Then she turns back.
"I chose men who were available. Present. Uncomplicated. I told myself that was what I needed. That it was the healthy choice." A pause. "It was pleasant. Nothing hurt." Her eyes move across all three of us. "Nothing mattered, either. No fear. No risk. Nothing that kept me awake or made me feel anything below the surface. I had been mistaking the absence of pain for contentment for years before I understood the difference."
"Or more likely when you ran out of their money and the pack moved on too," Tomas says. I know he looked her up. Santos and I closed that chapter long ago.
"The important thing is that I'm here now," she says. She takes a breath and holds it for a moment before she lets it go. "I am here because I know now we were all cowards in different directions and I would like to see what happens if we are not."
I look at Santos. Then at Tomas. The particular exchange that does not require words, fifteen years of it, the three of us reaching the same conclusion at the same speed.
I fold my hands on the desk.
"Chiara," I say.
She waits.
"No apology," I say, and I cannot hold back the anger any longer. "Not a single one."
"Look, it's great that you're here," Tomas says, "but we've moved on."
"What, with that fat omega!" Chiara snarls.
There it is. That instability. We never created it. It was always there.
"She can't satisfy you the way I can!"
Then she starts to peel off the dress, her tulip scent no longer pleasant but overwhelming.
"I can give you babies and everything."
"Don't talk about Jennifer that way," I say. "She's more of a woman than you will ever be. Get out of here, Chiara. The sight of you disgusts me."
Santos comes to stand beside me. He puts his hand on my shoulder for one moment, brief and solid, then drops it, and we stand together looking at the room the way we have stood together since we were seventeen years old, without needing to explain anything.
And just like that the security team opens the door on cue, after I gave them the signal. The idea of wanting anything with her again makes me sick. There's an omega I treated like I didn't care, and she's the only one we want to be with. That's if she'll have us.
We exchange looks while a hysterical, naked Chiara is being escorted out, confirming that we all have the same thing on our minds.
Jennifer.
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